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Cameron Joseph

Cameron Joseph is Talking Points Memo's senior political correspondent based in Washington, D.C. He covers Capitol Hill, the White House and the permanent campaign. Previous publications include the New York Daily News, Mashable, The Hill and National Journal. He grew up near Chicago and is an irrationally passionate Cubs fan.

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Cameron

The House will have to take a mulligan on tax reform after the Senate parliamentarian ruled some portions of the bill don’t pass muster with reconciliation rules Tuesday afternoon, an embarrassing if temporary setback for Republicans’ top legislative priority as they close out the year.

The screw-up was on the Senate side, and is the latest sign of how fast Republicans are trying to rush through a major overhaul of both corporate and individual tax law.

The parliamentarian struck down Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-TX) prized change to allow 529 college savings plans to be used for homeschooling expenses, as well as part of a provision exempting some private universities from a new tax on colleges’ student endowments. The title of the bill itself, “The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act,” was also ruled to violate Senate rules for allowing the bill to pass with 51 votes rather than a supermajority.

The changes are relatively minor — but the process screw-up is embarrassing. That ruling came just hours after House Republicans passed the $1.5 trillion tax cut, patting themselves on the back for a job well done.

“In the mad dash to provide tax breaks for their billionaire campaign contributors, our Republican colleagues forgot to comply with the rules of the Senate. We applaud the parliamentarian for determining that three provisions in this disastrous bill are in violation of the Byrd rule. It is our intention to raise a point of order to remove these provisions from the conference report and require the House to vote on this bill again,” Budget Committee ranking Democrat Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Finance Committee ranking Democrat Ron Wyden (D-OR) said in a joint statement late Tuesday afternoon.

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s (R-CA) office announced shortly afterwards that members should expect to revote on the bill Wednesday morning in response to the news. The Senate still plans to vote on the bill Tuesday night, though since it’ll now be a different bill the House will have to vote to concur with the changes before it can become law.

It’s a minor setback in the grand scheme for the GOP — but not a good look for Republicans.

An obstinate Moore refused to concede defeat to Democrat Doug Jones even though he trailed Jones by a not-that-close 49.9 percent to 48.4 percent, insisting there was a possibility of a recount.

“Realize that when the vote is this close it is not over. We’ve still got to go by the rules and by this recount provision,” he declared around 10:30 p.m. CT Tuesday evening, more than an hour after the race had been called by the Associated Press and most TV networks – an after Jones had given his victory speech.

“We also know that God is always in control. The problem with this campaign is we’ve been painted with an unfavorable and unfaithful light. We’ve been put in a hole, if you will,” he continued. “That’s what we’ve got to do – wait on God and let this process play out. … Let’s go home and sleep on it.”

Alabama has a law for an automatic recount if the race’s margin is within 0.5 percent, paid for by the state. If the margin is wider, then a candidate can ask for (and pay for) a recount. But Jones led by more than 21,000 votes — a gaping chasm in the world of recount elections.

Moore’s campaign insisted Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill had indicated that a recount could happen, and told reporters to head to his office for an explanation of the rules.

Merrill, a staunch conservative who’d stuck by Moore’s campaign, said Moore could get a recount if he paid for it. But he threw cold water on Moore’s plans, telling CNN he “would find it highly unlikely” that Jones won’t be Alabama’s next senator.

Alabama Republicans made it clear that Moore is on his own in his quixotic quest.

“While we are deeply disappointed in the extremely close U.S. Senate election results, with our candidate Judge Roy Moore, we respect the voting process given to us by our Founding Fathers,” Alabama Republican Party Chair Terry Lathan said in a statement. “Now that this race has ended, may this holiday season of peace, love and hope resonate with everyone, regardless of one’s political affiliation.”

Even some of Moore’s closest allies weren’t optimistic.

John Eidsmoe, a friend and ally for decades who works for Moore’s Foundation for Moral Law, told TPM that it could be “days” for a final count — but was shocked when TPM told him that Jones trailed by more than 20,000 votes. When asked how confident he was that Moore could win, he said “not very.”

Moore, a firebrand social conservative, blew a race few thought a Democrat could win, largely because nine women came forward to accuse him of sexual misconduct. He remained willfully defiant throughout the campaign, denying all accusations. And after a career of obstinate refusal and intransigent fights with everyone who told him no, he looks like he’s going to go down kicking and screaming.

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Democrat Doug Jones will be Alabama’s next senator after one of the wildest races in recent memory, giving Democrats a crucial seat in the chamber and opening a real if narrow path to retaking Senate control next year.

Jones lead accused child molester and GOP nominee Roy Moore by 49.6 percent to 48.8 percent with 89 percent of precincts reporting, according to the New York Times returns. The Associated Press has called the race, as have several TV networks.

Jones’s improbable victory was made possible when multiple women came forward to accuse Moore of sexual misconduct towards them when they were teenagers. Those allegations plunged the race into chaos and gave his party a rare chance at seriously contesting a race in deep red Alabama, where no Democrat has won a major statewide office since 2006.

His win narrows Republicans’ edge in the Senate to 51-49, leaving even less room for error on legislation and giving Democrats a real chance at winning back control of the chamber next year in spite of a brutal map where they’re mostly on defense.

Democrats now just need to hold serve in the 10 states that Trump won where they’re defending incumbents, and pick up swing-state Nevada and Arizona, to win back control. That appears doable if tough in the current political environment.

The result is likely to further inflame tensions between Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and President Trump. McConnell disavowed Moore’s campaign, called for him to drop out and refused to spend to help him after the allegations surfaced, while Trump rode to his rescue with rallies and money from the Republican National Committee after refusing to help push him out of the race. Both will likely blame the other for the disastrous result, further fueling fights within the party that will play out in a number of Senate primaries.

It’s also a blow to former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, who threw his support hard behind Moore in the primary and stuck by him through the race. Bannon has promised support to a rash of populist firebrands in GOP primaries, but it might be harder to convince voters to back his candidates after the debacle in Alabama, where he was one of Moore’s most visible supporters.

The infighting between the factions began even before final results were in — and escalated as soon as the race was called for Jones.

“This is a brutal reminder that candidate quality matters regardless of where you are running,” Steven Law, the head of the pro-McConnell Senate Leadership Fund, said in a statement immediately after the AP called the race. “Not only did Steve Bannon cost us a critical Senate seat in one of the most Republican states in the country, but he also dragged the President of the United States into his fiasco.”

Congratulations to Doug Jones on a hard fought victory. The write-in votes played a very big factor, but a win is a win. The people of Alabama are great, and the Republicans will have another shot at this seat in a very short period of time. It never ends!

“I hate the fact that Doug Jones ran a gutter-style campaign instead of addressing the issues. This man hasn’t been charged with anything, he’s always been a man of faith,” Trump Alabama state chairman Perry Hooper, who was at the Moore election event, told TPM.

Hooper then turned on Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL), the most prominent Alabama Republican who publicly refused to back Moore.

“It’s upsetting being a Trump guy, it’s a setback to Alabama… and there’s a lot of people upset with Sen. Shelby, I’ll tell you that,” he said.

“We have shown the country the way that we can be unified. … At the end of the day, this entire race has been about dignity and respect,” Jones said to a jubilant crowd in Birmingham. “This campaign has been about common courtesy and decency, and making sure everyone in this state, regardless of which zip code you live in, is going to get a fair shake in life.”

But even after the race was clearly over, Moore’s campaign wasn’t ready to concede defeat.

“Some people have called the race. We’re not calling it yet. … And it could be a while,” Moore adviser Rich Hobson said at 9:40 p.m. central time before asking supporters to pray.

Jones is a relatively liberal Democrat who’s likely to stand with his party on most issues for the next few years. He’s pro-choice, believes in climate change and holds progressive views on civil rights, LGBT rights and immigration.

He’s also been critical of the GOP tax bill, putting additional pressure on Republicans to pass the legislation before the end of the year, when he’ll replace appointed Sen. Luther Strange (R-AL) in Congress. Strange was appointed to the seat when President Trump picked Jeff Sessions to lead the Department of Justice, and lost to Moore in the primary in spite of huge spending by McConnell and his allies.

Jones is a former U.S. attorney who is best known in Alabama for successfully reopening a decades-old case and prosecuting the Ku Klux Klansmen who bombed a Birmingham church in 1963, killing four little girls.

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Tensions have started to build underneath the sounds of smooth jazz at Roy Moore’s election night party as updated results have Democrat Doug Jones closing in on Moore.

Moore was clinging to a narrow lead of 49.5 percent to 49 percent lead — less than 5,000 votes —shortly after 9 p.m. CT on Tuesday — when a jazz saxophonist wrapped up his cover of Carlos Santana’s “Smooth” and a few other gems and was met with nervous silence from the audience. Moore’s lead in the raw vote count had been shrinking all evening. County-by-county results indicated a nail-biter of a race — and the more urban, more Democratic counties had more of the outstanding vote.

“We’re hanging on, 81% of the vote, we need some more,” a Moore surrogate who’d been keeping the crowd warm all night said as a once-raucous crowd tittered nervously.

“Call it!” someone in the crowd yelled a few minutes later after a family band came onstage to sing “America the Beautiful.”

“I want to call it,” he joked back.

But the once-excited crowd’s happy chatter had dimmed to a dull murmur. And at 9:15 p.m. CT, the crowd fell silent as Jones pulled ahead, with the sad sounds of “Amazing Grace” playing in the background.

Black turnout has been higher than most experts expected — and significantly higher than white turnout in some crucial counties. That’s helped Jones claw his way into a virtual tie.

The race appears headed for a photo finish, with even expert prognosticators unclear who will win.

For those watching at home, under Alabama law any election narrower than 0.5 percent of the vote triggers an automatic recount. Get your popcorn.

If y’all continue to keep the faith,” the Moore surrogate told the crowd, “we’re going to get this thing.”

MIDLAND CITY, Ala. — Kayla Moore used the final campaign rally for her husband to fire back against accusations that they hate Jews, black people and women, with an interesting choice of evidence.

“Fake news would tell you that we don’t care for Jews. But I’ll tell you all this because I see you all, I just want to set the record straight while they’re here: One of our attorneys is a Jew,” Kayla Moore said,waving towards the back of the room where reporters were gathered. “We have very close friends who are Jewish.”

The comment came towards the end of a testy and sometimes bizarre rally Monday night where she, her deeply controversial husband, Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore, and top allies lashed out at all of their enemies, real and imagined: The multiple women who’ve accused him of sexual misconduct towards them when they were teenagers, the “fake news” that covered the women’s claims, the Republican establishment that’s recoiled from Moore since the allegations broke, and the Democrats who are hoping to score a shocking victory against him on Tuesday.

It was a fitting capstone for one of the most bizarre elections in recent memory.

Moore, who’s been missing from the campaign trail for almost a week, admitted he’d gone to Philadelphia “for two and a half days” to see his son play in the Army-Navy football game, while slamming reporters daring to report on his absence. Moore’s campaign had steadily refused to say where he was, insisting he’d been doing private events around the state.

“That’s one reason I don’t talk to the media — they won’t print the truth,” he said.

﻿

The event, held in an upscale barn in the deeply conservative and rural southeast corner of the state, featured stars of the hard right including former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, former Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke and Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX). A few hundred hardcore supporters showed up, as did almost as many journalists and dozens of protestors waving signs for Moore’s opponent, Democrat Doug Jones.

Bannon painted the race as “an up or down vote between the Trump miracle and the nullification project” — and issued broadsides against the media and the GOP establishment, barely mentioning Moore for much of his speech.

“There’s a special place in hell for Republicans who should know better,” he said to cheers, seemingly tweaking first daughter Ivanka Trump for her comments that “there’s a special place in hell for people who prey on children.”

Gohmert, a former judge, said the women who have accused Moore should be jailed if they lied:“If somebody got money for trying to destroy a righteous man, there’s a place called prison.”

But both were just warm-up acts for a man who said he served in Vietnam with Moore — and told a story about the two of them being taken by another soldier to a brothel they’d thought was just a private club when they’d agreed to go. As soon as Moore realized where they were, he said they should leave immediately, the man said.

“That was Roy. Honorable, disciplined, morally straight and highly principled,” he said, describing the accusations against Moore as the “political equivalent of a Vietcong ambush.”

The race has been consumed by accusations from multiple women of sexual misconduct towards them when they were teenagers — including one who says she was 14 when Moore undressed her and put her hand on his underwear, and another who says she was 16 when Moore sexually assaulted her.

Moore has led Jones in most, but not all recent polls of the race, in a contest that’s nearly impossible to predict heading into Election Day. Alabama hasn’t seen a tight statewide race in a decade, and a Jones victory would be a huge upset even with Moore’s fatal flaws as a candidate. Jones is banking on huge black turnout and major defections from Republican women to win the race.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Former Louisiana Gov. Edwin Edwards (D) once bragged that the only way he’d lose reelection is if he was caught with “a dead girl or a live boy.” Roy Moore might be about to do him one better.

Moore has been accused of sexual misconduct by multiple women, most of whom were teenagers at the time. Top national Republicans have demanded he leave the Alabama Senate race, refused to support his campaign and threatened him with a Senate Ethics Committee investigation on the day he’s sworn in. He’s spent the final week of his hotly contested campaign in hiding, with no public events since last Tuesday. His TV ads have the production quality of local infomercials. His campaign has been badly outspent by Doug Jones, his Democratic opponent. His potential future colleague, Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) slammed Moore on national television on Sunday, saying “Alabama deserves better.”

Yet Moore has crept back into the lead in public and private polls — and it’s difficult to find anyone in the state outside of Jones’ surrogates, including Moore’s harshest critics, who think he’s likely to lose.

Hamilton said she was “much more nervous now” than she had been a few weeks earlier.

“We’re going to keep working because you never know, you just never know, and Doug is just too great a candidate to let it go,” she said.

She, and the many other Jones volunteers TPM talked to across the state the last few days who expressed pessimism about the race’s outcome, have reason to be concerned.

Jones had shot to a lead in public and private polls before Thanksgiving, in the wake of the accusations against Moore of sexual misconduct from nine women, including one who said he sexually assaulted her when she was 16 and he was a deputy district attorney in his early ’30s, and another who said he initiated a sexual encounter with her when she was just 14 years old.

But Moore has come back and currently holds a lead slightly outside the margin of error in most recent public polls. Moore’s own internal survey had him up by 8 points over the weekend, according to two sources familiar with the numbers.

Democrats believe the race is a much closer contest, with Moore and Jones essentially tied. While it’s impossible to confidently predict a turnout in an oddly timed December election where one candidate is so fatally flawed and turnout levels amongst key groups including African Americans is a mystery, Republicans clearly feel more confident.

The race isn’t over yet, but if Moore wins it will be in spite of himself.

The candidate has been in hiding for the last week, taking a full six days off between a Tuesday rally with former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon and another one with Bannon scheduled for Monday night. He hasn’t taken questions from any news outlets who aren’t friendly to his candidacy since the scandal blew up more than a month ago.

Moore wasn’t even in the state for part of the final week. A source close to his campaign confirmed to TPM that he flew to Philadelphia to see his son play in the Army-Navy football game on Saturday, and he wasn’t at his own church Sunday morning. His thinly staffed campaign had almost no visible presence around the state past a few yard signs along the highway and scattered TV ads.

“I know you’re excited because I’m the only candidate talking to you,” Jones said mockingly of Moore during a quick scrum with reporters Sunday in Birmingham. “What kind of public servant hides?”

While Moore has gone to ground, Jones has been almost everywhere in the state in the past week. His campaign says it’s made more than 1 million phone calls, hit more than 100,000 doors and held almost 250 events in the race. In the last weekend alone he held rallies across the state with Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick (D), Rep. Terri Sewell (D-AL) and other prominent African American politicians, as well as a pair of concerts from indie-country darlings Jason Isbell and Shovels & Rope.

The Jones surrogates pushed to remind voters it’s not just Moore’s alleged sexual history that should give them pause — it’s his controversial views on race and his hostility towards gay people and non-Christians.

“It’s going to be a turnout game,” Sewell told TPM in Selma. “It’s a great juxtaposition. You have a person who’s going to be fighting for equal justice for everyone and someone who really stands for divisiveness and has always stood for divisiveness.”

But it’s still Alabama — one of the most racially polarized and conservative states in the country. No Democrat has won statewide here in more than a decade, and the more national “elites” criticize what Alabamians are doing, the more stubbornly many voters resist being told what to do.

Moore has also had some help. President Trump has painted the race’s outcome as crucial for his presidency, and parachuted in for a rally in one of Alabama’s larger media markets.

“We need somebody in that Senate seat who will vote for our Make America Great Again agenda,” he said to cheers at a rally Friday just over the border in Pensacola, Florida. “We want jobs, jobs, jobs. So get out and vote for Roy Moore.”

Trump says the same in a robocall for Moore aimed at turning out the GOP base. The Republican National Committee has spent a total of $170,000 to boost Moore’s chances in the last week, the pro-Trump outside group America First Action dropped more than $1 million in the same stretch, and the National Rifle Association sent around mailers to its members pushing them to back Moore as well.

That all matters — as does the general dismissal of the accusers by many Republicans, who claim the women are likely lying and even if they’re telling the truth that it’s not that big of a deal.

Helping their argument was accuser Beverly Young Nelson’s admission Friday that she’d added a date and location to what she says is Moore’s inscription in her yearbook. Nelson has said Moore sexually assaulted her when she was 16, one of the most serious allegations against him.

Jeana Boggs, a longtime Moore friend and campaign volunteer who attended Trump’s Pensacola rally on Friday, told TPM that she didn’t believe the two women accusing Moore of his worst actions — and if the rest are telling the truth, what of it?

“He did nothing illegal. The age of consent was 16, and our parents, my sister was set up when she was 16 with a 30-year-old guy, and I worked in a dry cleaners when I was 15 or 16 years old and I dated the guy who owned the service station next door and he was in his 30s. Girls would brag about it, especially if the guy had an education, a career and was good looking,” she told TPM Sunday. “The other women said he was a perfect gentleman, it was only those two, and their statements have been debunked.”

Boggs said that “Trump’s endorsement and the yearbook fiasco” had handed Moore a comfortable lead in the race.

Her dismissiveness was echoed by many other Republicans across the state — though there were clear gender, educational and generational divides in how people viewed the accusations against Moore.

Many older Republican women didn’t believe the accusers or shrugged off the allegations, while a number of younger women saw things very differently and were either voting for Jones or staying home. Most older Republican men were sticking with Moore, but some younger ones said they couldn’t bring themselves to vote for either candidate.

The biggest question for Jones is black turnout. Jones’ campaign has put a huge effort into mobilizing black voters, as has a local outside group which has “Vote or Die” signs all over the state.

While anecdotal information is inherently limited, most African American voters TPM talked to from Huntsville to Selma to Montgomery had heard a ton about the race from TV, said they’d been contacted by Jones’s campaign or allies, and planned to vote. While they all knew a lot more about Moore than Jones, many mentioned Jones’ work prosecuting KKK members in the notorious civil rights-era bombing of a black church in Birmingham.

Tabitha Austin, an African American woman, told TPM as she grabbed lunch at Lannie’s barbecue in Selma she’d heard about the race “All day, every day” on TV, and was “absolutely” voting, calling Moore a “donkey.” Others expressed similar views.

Jones’ allies admit they need almost everything to go right on Tuesday to pull off what would still be a stunning upset in deep-red Alabama. But they’re holding out hope.

“I recognize that it’s not only uphill but up-mountain,” Alabama state Rep. Hank Sanders (D) told TPM in Montgomery. “But I think we’re going to be mountain-climbing.”

Correction: This story originally misidentified Alabama state Rep. Hank Sanders (D). We regret the error.

A national Democratic group is putting out a “predator alert” on Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore to try and convince Republican women to vote against the accused child molester on Tuesday.

American Bridge is launching a last-minute digital ad that begins with the sound of an emergency alert — and only gets darker from there.

“Roy Moore has infiltrated our Alabama communities and his rap sheet reads like a serial sexual predator,” the ad’s narrator says as prison rap sheet-like images with Moore’s face flash onscreen. “His record from the Alabama Supreme Court paints an even darker picture. Judge Moore has repeatedly sided with rapists and sexual predators. These aren’t Alabama values. On Tuesday, Dec. 12, vote no on Roy Moore.”

Nine women have accused Moore of initiating inappropriate sexual encounters, many of them when they were teenagers. One says Moore undressed both of them and put her hand on the front of his underwear when she was 14 years old, while another says she was 16 when Moore sexually assaulted her.

Moore also had a record of siding with defendants in sex crime cases while serving as a judge, according to reports.

Those accusations have consumed the race — and badly damaged Moore, creating a close race in deep red Alabama. Moore has inched ahead in recent public polls, but if Democrat Doug Jones gets enough African American support and wins over enough Republican women he could still pull off an upset on Tuesday.

The digital ad, shared first with TPM, is targeting the latter group: Republican women who don’t like President Trump. The ad has $15,000 behind it, a small but not insignificant amount for a statewide digital buy.

This story has been updated to reflect the full size of American Bridge’s ad buy.

PENSACOLA, Fla — President Trump may have been in Florida on Friday night, but his mind was roughly 15 miles away.

Trump heartily endorsed Alabama Senate candidate and accused child molester Roy Moore during a rally just over the Alabama border, while taking swipes at a woman who accused Moore of sexually assaulting her when she was a teenager.

Trump then took aim at Beverly Young Nelson, who has said Moore sexually assaulted her when she was 16 years old — one of a number of women who has accused Moore of sexual misconduct towards them when they were teenagers. Nelson admitted in a Friday interview that a she has added a bit to the high school yearbook inscription she had said was from Moore — though she said it was just marking where and when he’d signed it, not a change to the inscription itself.

“You know the yearbook? Did you see that? There was a little mistake made, she started writing things in the yearbook. Oh, what are we going to do. Gloria Allred, anytime you see her you know something’s going wrong,” he said, referring to Nelson’s feminist attorney and Democratic activist.

Moore is locked in a tight race with Democrat Doug Jones, though he’s pulled back into the lead in most public polls. Part of the reason he seems to have inched ahead since Thanksgiving in spite of all the accusations against him is Trump’s tacit endorsement right before the holiday — and full embrace and re-endorsement earlier this week.

Trump made it clear he knew who his audience was — the Alabamians in the building, and the nearly quarter of the state that shares a media market with Pensacola.

“By the way just so I can satisfy this to everyone out here, how many people out there are from the great state of Alabama?” he asked as roughly half the crowd cheered.

“We need somebody in that Senate seat who will vote for our Make America Great Again agenda which involves tough on crime, strong on borders, strong on immigration, we want great people coming into our country,” he said to cheers. “We want jobs, jobs, jobs. So get out and vote for Roy Moore.”

Moore wasn’t in the building, according to sources. But plenty of his supporters were around.

“I knew he was going to give a shout-out, but that was strong as new rope,” Trump’s Alabama state chairman Perry Hooper, a Moore supporter, told TPM after the speech. “He laid it out there. It’s about repealing Obamacare, cutting taxes, building the wall, and Doug Jones won’t be for any of that.”

Jeana Boggs, a Trump delegate at the Republican National Committee who worked for Moore for years and has been heavily involved in his campaign, sat next to Hooper in the second row in front of Trump’s podium.

“Since all the accusations came out, we consider that God’s going to take care of this, he’s going to expose all the lies,” she said, calling the race the “dirtiest” campaign she’s ever seen in five decades involved in campaigns, and saying that after multiple women accused Trump of sexual assault last fall it’s the “same road the liberals are taking” against Moore.

“We’re going to win. If God wants him there, he’s going to put him there,” she said.

Even some of the most ardent Trump backers who spoke to TPM, while never wavering in their support of Moore, weren’t sure how much Trump’s endorsement will help. But all were confident Moore will win, something that didn’t seem so sure a few weeks ago.

Penny Hall and her sister Lulu Raffilde backed Sen. Luther Strange (R-AL) in the primary against Moore, but said their support had nothing to do with Trump’s primary endorsement of Strange.

They expressed a deep hostility to being told what to do by outsiders — even from a president they loved. That sentiment seems to be helping Moore, who has run hard against the Washington establishment, lumping in the media, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Democrats.

“Alabama’s going to do what Alabama wants to do, no matter what,” Hall said.

Senate Democrats appear to have scored a recruiting coup that increases their slim chances at retaking the chamber.

Popular former Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen (D) will run for Senate, according to two localnewspapers, giving Democrats a heavy-hitting candidate for long-shot seat.

Bredesen, who served two terms and left office with strong approval ratings in 2010, gives Democrats a well-connected and well-liked candidate who likely has a singular ability to win in the Republican-heavy state.

Sen. Bob Corker’s (R-TN) decision to retire has created a slim opening for Democrats in the state. Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) is facing off against former Rep. Steven Fincher (R-TN) in the GOP primary.

National Democrats have courted Bredesen for months to run, seeing him as their best — and perhaps only — chance to win the seat in a state where President Trump won by 26 percentage points. And it sounds like they’ve got their man.

Senate Democrats are mostly on defense this year due to an unfavorable map with multiple red-state incumbents facing tough reelections. But putting Tennessee on the map gives them one narrow path back to the majority — especially if they can pull off an upset in Alabama’s special election next week.

Alabama Senate Democratic nominee Doug Jones came out swinging at Republican Roy Moore on Tuesday, drawing a sharp contrast between his career as a prosecutor and Moore, who faces allegations from multiple women of initiating sexual encounters when they were teenagers.

“I damn sure believe and have done my part to ensure that men who hurt little girls should go to jail — not to the U.S. Senate,” Jones said in a Tuesday campaign speech that took on a more combative tone than in the past.

Jones is best known for reopening a cold case and successfully prosecuting KKK members who bombed a black church in Birmingham, Ala. in 1963, killing four young girls.

Nine women have come forward to accuse Moore of inappropriate sexual actions, including one who was 16 when she says he violently sexually assaulted her and another who was 14 when she says he initiated a sexual encounter. Before those accusations, he was best known for getting thrown off the Alabama Supreme Court twice for failing to follow the rule of law — and for his hardline theocratic views that his interpretation of the Bible supersedes the Constitution and harsh anti-gay and anti-Muslim statements.

In spite of that, he’s climbed back into a virtual tie with Jones in recent public and private polls — and President Trump doubled down on his endorsement of Moore on Monday, possibly further boosting his campaign.

Jones’s pointed line wasn’t his only broadside against Moore during the speech.

He also warned a Moore win would “be bad for business in Alabama, bad for the economy, and bad for our country” — and attacked Moore for coauthoring a classroom curriculum that taught women shouldn’t run for public office.

“Roy Moore was already an embarrassment to this state before nine courageous women chose to share their deeply personal and disturbing encounters with him from a time when he was a thirty-something year old Assistant District Attorney and they were only teenagers, one as young as 14,” he said.